Spider-Man: No Way Home Deleted Scene Puts Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man and Green Goblin on the Glider Together

Spider-Man: No Way Home's digital release and its Blu-ray extras delivered something many of us left the theater wishing we had seen more of: a true reunion between Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man and Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin. The newly released clips show that the two actually did share a moment together in a fight that was removed from the film.

Once you plug that scene back into the theatrical sequence, it gives a fascinating new context for the movie's final act and for what was really running through Goblin's twisted mind. In the finished film, it felt like any time these two almost shared a frame, Goblin seemed to step away, and Norman just moped in the background behind Tobey's Peter. Here is how I think the lost fight fits.

Norman Osborn's death is the wound Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker never healed

Earlier in No Way Home, after Norman kills Aunt May, Tom Holland's Peter cannot even bring himself to say Norman Osborn's name. That is when Tobey's Peter steps up and offers to take on the cure himself, saying he has been thinking about an anti-serum for Norman for a long time. I love this moment from Tobey Maguire, because it shows how, for his Peter, the death of Norman Osborn was a major unresolved regret.

In his eyes, that was really the beginning of his problems. It was not the spider bite, and it was not the death of Uncle Ben. Uncle Ben's death was a big regret, sure, but in Spider-Man 3 Flint Marko's involvement in that incident actually helped Peter learn the right lessons from it. Osborn's death, however, was the curse Tobey's Peter never healed from. It poisoned his friendship with Harry Osborn and sent him down his dark path in Spider-Man 3, where he almost lost MJ and lost his best friend.

That clearly still haunts him. When Ned asks whether he had a best friend too, he answers: "I did. He died in my arms after he tried to kill me." This was the true legacy of the Osborn curse, a wound so brutal that Tobey's Peter even alludes to it after Goblin stabs him, referring back to his fight with Harry in Spider-Man 3, when Harry stuck him with a dagger.

That stabbing leads into the only eye to eye connection these two share in the whole film, as Norman wakes up from the Goblin nightmare. It is a beautiful moment of acting from Willem Dafoe, but the question he asks is directed at Tom Holland's Peter, framed around Norman realizing what he did to May, not what he just did to Tobey's Peter. And even when the spell sends everyone back to their home realities, that symbolic, unhealable wound continues to pain him.

The deleted clips show Tobey's Spider-Man fighting Green Goblin on the glider

That brings us to the new material released with the digital and Blu-ray editions. One brief clip shows Tobey's Spider-Man, mask on, fighting Goblin with both of them on the glider. Another clip shows an even more interesting piece of the sequence: it starts with Tobey's Spider-Man alone on the glider, then Goblin leaps down onto it to join him and fights him.

So what was really going on here, and why was it removed from the film? To answer that, you have to go back through the beats of the Statue of Liberty battle and look for the gap where this could have lived.

The Statue of Liberty battle leaves little room for this fight in its later chaos

The three heroes, with Doc Ock's help, successfully cure Sandman, Electro and the Lizard. Tobey's Peter has his moment of agreement with Doc Ock, and Andrew Garfield's Peter has his reunion with Electro. Then Doctor Strange returns from the Mirror Dimension, and Tobey's spider sense kicks in as Goblin calls out, "Can the Spider-Man come out to play?"

From there it all unfolds fast. Goblin swoops in with his razor bats, Doc Ock shields the others, Goblin swipes the box, Doc Ock grabs the glider, Strange lassoes the box back, and Goblin cuts one of Doc Ock's arms and flees, leaving a pumpkin grenade in the box, which explodes. Throughout all of this, Tobey's Peter just kind of watches, and there really is not a spot in those few seconds where he could have put on his mask and engaged Goblin on the glider.

After the box explodes, the scaffolding collapses and the shield plunges, pausing at the statue's chest. MJ falls, Tom's Peter tries to save her, Goblin swipes him out of the way, and Andrew's Peter saves her instead. Then the shield falls all the way to the bottom, smashing through the rest of the scaffolding. In the falling debris we see Tobey's Peter webbing Andrew's, Doc Ock grabbing Electro and the cloak saving Ned. There is no sign of who saved MJ, if Andrew's Peter needed saving, but she just runs out from behind some rubble when Ned lands, totally fine.

After the shield hits ground level and rolls partly into the water, we see Tom's Peter still holding onto Goblin's glider, breaking open the grenade chamber, activating a grenade and stuffing it back in to crash them both onto the shield. That tracks from Goblin swiping Peter away from MJ. It is possible something was cut from the middle of the shield's collapse, between the fall to halfway down the statue and the rest of the drop. Maybe after Goblin cut Doc Ock's arm, Tobey's Peter went after him, the two shared a moment on the glider, and Tobey got knocked off or something.

I think the cut happened right after Tobey's Peter cures Sandman

But the new clips show Tobey masked during his fight with Goblin. All three heroes were only masked in the earlier part of the battle; they took the masks off to talk to Max and Otto and then left them off for the rest of the film. So I think his confrontation with Goblin on the glider happened earlier, while they were still struggling with Sandman, Electro and the Lizard.

Actually, I think you can pinpoint the exact second the cut happened: the moment Tobey's Peter cures Sandman. That scene uses archival shots of Thomas Haden Church from the 2007 film, since Church only returned to No Way Home for voice work. Tobey's Peter is unmasked there, but seconds later he is masked again, joining Tom's and Andrew's versions of the hero on the statue's head. He swings in from the side, even though the moment with Flint takes place inside the statue's head, which would be right behind where they now are.

So I think that is where Tobey's Peter was originally going to fight Goblin, who would have shown up in the first part of the battle, and where Tobey and Willem were going to get their big face to face reunion. After curing Flint, Tobey's Peter would have put his mask on and collided directly with Goblin's glider, just the glider, and after he boarded it, Goblin would have dropped down to join him and they would have fought.

Why Green Goblin would send the glider alone after Tobey's Peter

Why the glider alone? Because that was how Tobey's Peter subdued Goblin in the 2002 film, with Goblin impaled by his own glider. Goblin had already killed one person that night using the glider as a drone spear, Aunt May, and now he would have tried to kill his own Peter Parker the same way.

You might say that Norman was teleported into the MCU before he died that way, and that is correct. But the film deliberately includes a line where Flint Marko tells him what his fate was going to be: it was all over the news that Green Goblin was impaled by the glider he flew around on. Right there in Willem Dafoe's eyes, you can see the spark of an idea that he could use this to kill his biggest enemy the same way he was going to be done in.

That would have given us the moment between Goblin and Tobey's Peter that we all wanted so badly. Imagine that conversation: Goblin recalling the "Godspeed, Spider-Man" line, and Tobey's Peter replying that he actually did tell Harry, and it was the biggest regret of his life. That would lead to Goblin retreating for now, which is why Tobey's Peter is later the first to notice him when he returns asking whether the Spider-Man can come out to play.

The cut made Goblin's return a bigger surprise, at a cost

Really, it just seems like the scene was cut so that Goblin's delayed assault later in the battle would come as a bigger surprise, a way to raise the stakes in the second act of the fight. And it does. It totally works.

"But it does come at the expense of us getting one face-to-face reunion that we were really hoping for." At the time, I was hoping we would see the full version of the scene on the Blu-ray.

Should No Way Home have kept Tobey Maguire's glider showdown with Green Goblin, or was saving Goblin's return for the surprise the right call?